Mona Louise Campbell was President of Dover Industries LTD and Dover Mills Halifax and Vice Chairman of the Board for Dalhousie University School of Business Administration. She was also a founder of the Royal Ontario Museum. Among her numerous charitable endeavours, Mrs. Campbell believed that the Lorenzen mushrooms held in her collection should be returned to Nova Scotia.

Her collection consisted of 18 ceramic mushrooms by Ernst and Alma Lorenzen. The Lorenzens were not native Nova Scotians (they were from Denmark and New Brunswick respectively) but they worked full time as artists and potters in their studio in Lantz, Nova Scotia. Intrigued by the many and diverse mushrooms found in Nova Scotia (an ideal climate for mushrooms and home to many rare species), the Lorenzens began to created models of mushrooms they collected. Ernst developed his own glazes using mineral deposits they collected from around the province to get the realistic colours for the mushrooms.